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A review by geoffreyjen
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
5.0
[a:Pat Barker|4000|Pat Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1539120639p2/4000.jpg]'s books are never straightforward tellings of events. She deals with the traumas of war, and it would seem this has to be done in tangential ways, by not looking at the subject in order to look at it. One of the reasons I started reading Barker's books is because I have my own project writing about trauma and it was suggested to me to look at how she did it. I have found her methods to be exactly right and reinforce my own asides to get at the subject. This book, like the one before it, perhaps even more so, has passages of sheer brilliance. The book overall is less cohesive than the first one, but the writing is more powerful. The whole idea of "the eye in the door"! More than just a metaphor or symbol, the whole history of trauma is bound up into it. In a sense, the eye in the door is the ultimate trigger, which is, of course, the central problem of trauma : how to gain access to it without retriggering the harmful experiences which can self-reinforce. Not the easiest novel, but brilliant nonetheless.
I found large sections of this book riveting, but not because of any action or even relational interactions, but rather for its efforts to ferret out the dynamics of neuroses, trauma, dissociations, and so forth. So relational, yes, but of a very specific kind. And ultimately the analysis reminded me of [a:Robertson Davies|23129|Robertson Davies|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225671081p2/23129.jpg]'s [b:The Manticore|114496|The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309286341l/114496._SY75_.jpg|1336039], perhaps inevitably, even though that book was about Jungian analysis and this was not. Difficult material to handle well, but done with a great deal of delicacy here. A thoroughly good book, and I am motivated to tackle the third volume as well.
I found large sections of this book riveting, but not because of any action or even relational interactions, but rather for its efforts to ferret out the dynamics of neuroses, trauma, dissociations, and so forth. So relational, yes, but of a very specific kind. And ultimately the analysis reminded me of [a:Robertson Davies|23129|Robertson Davies|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225671081p2/23129.jpg]'s [b:The Manticore|114496|The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2)|Robertson Davies|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309286341l/114496._SY75_.jpg|1336039], perhaps inevitably, even though that book was about Jungian analysis and this was not. Difficult material to handle well, but done with a great deal of delicacy here. A thoroughly good book, and I am motivated to tackle the third volume as well.